Invisible
by Smif
Summary: Sakura doesn’t know how or why, she just knows that one day they both became invisible to each other. Non-entities. Nonexistent.


**Invisible**

A/Ns: I should probably find a real category for this style of piece. I write them quite a lot, for some reason. Paper Flowers, Flawed Ripples, Shockwaves to an extent... Rather introspective narratives, with a good bit of unexplained backstory and basically no real action or dialogue. Hm.

Anyway. SakuraPOV, mostly. Mild mentioned SasuSaku (partially one-sided, try not to let it put you off if you're a hater), mentioned SaiNaru/NaruSai, and very mild, implied SasuNaru/NaruSasu. If you look _really_ hard.

Disclaimer: Kishimoto owns Naruto. Darn. So he does. I own the writing, though!

* * *

They don't fight anymore. That terrifies Sakura, which is sort of ironic, because it used to scare her when they _did_. But not now. Now she just wishes things would go back to the way they were.

It would be less strange if they even admitted one another's existence. But they don't. Neither of them will speak to the other, even glance their way. They talk over one another at times, but it doesn't even seem to be with the intention to annoy; they don't argue about it, of course, because as far as the two of them are concerned, there is no one else speaking.

Things changed too much. Sakura isn't even sure what happened. She's never been able to ask, because of course, though neither of them will actually leave if she brings up the other, they just wait for her to finish and carry on as if she hadn't said anything. The only time they will acknowledge the other's existence is very grudgingly, when they have no other choice, and only to others. They always talk in the past tense, as well, with no emotion to their voices; mechanical. As if the other is dead, and it's not like they cared anyways. As if...

'...It's in the past now.' Sakura whispers into the dark, at night, when she should really be sleeping. But she can't help dwelling on it, even though she wishes she didn't have to, because they're both her best friends. Hell, she's even dating Sasuke now, even if he's a little cold - okay, a lot cold, and he hardly ever touches her, but he's kind enough to her, and refers to her as his girlfriend. Which should be enough, shouldn't it?

No. Of course it shouldn't. She wants him to love her, wants it so badly that sometimes she feels like tearing her flesh apart with her fingernails and screaming and screaming, and maybe if she did then Sasuke would notice her. Maybe he would care. She doesn't know.

She doesn't really know him. That's what scares her. She knows she's never been all that close to him, and she doesn't lie to herself and try to pretend she understands even a fraction of what he's gone through, but at least before he left he felt less... _unreachable_. Even after he returned, when he was cold as ice and spoke to nobody but Naruto...

But that's what went wrong. She doesn't know how or why, she just knows that one day they both became invisible to each other. Non-entities. Nonexistent.

It hurts badly, to be in love with one man who says (in a way - his way - although maybe not really) that he loves you, and to be like a sister to another man who you adore and who adores you, and yet neither of them even seem to notice each other.

She knows it's not that, not really. She doesn't _know_ what went on between them, in the first year of probation/quarantine, whatever it was, but she has a few guesses. A few guesses that make her want to throw up, or cry, or stare dully at the rain sliding down the windowpane slowly like something more viscous and sticky than water...

And whatever it was, that terrible thing that they did to one another - it broke them. Both of them. She can tell, and not just in the obvious ways, such as the fact that they ignore each other completely these days. On the few occasions that she camps out at Sasuke's flat for once - not a frequent occurrence - she always hears him crying at night. At first, while she tried gently to soothe him, she mulled over the cause of his nightmares. She assumed, naturally, that it was something to do with his horrible childhood, but- After that, just once or twice, Sasuke whispered - mouthed - breathed - Naruto's name in his sleep, with his face twisted like he were in agony. Those are almost the only times he ever mentions Naruto, and Sakura isn't sure that she has the courage to ask what it is Sasuke dreams about him. So she keeps her questions to herself, at least for now.

Naruto is harder to read, somehow, which is odd for someone who wears his heart on his sleeve most of the time. But she just knows. He's like her little brother, always playing stupid pranks that are actually pretty funny, if she allows herself to get down off her high horse for a bit. He seems just the same as he's always been - the least effected by Sasuke's leaving and returning, and everything that happened in between - but she and everybody else knows perfectly well that that's a lie. It isn't like he started hiding it until a couple of years ago. And in that time, he's gotten frighteningly good at it.

But she knows that they still affect one another. It's both a painful and bitterly satisfying realisation. She understood it fully the day that, some weeks after she had found out about Naruto's new relationship with Sai, of all people, she went over to Sasuke's house to find him not there. After searching for a bit, she eventually found him well outside Konoha, amidst the destroyed landscape and shattered rocks that he had obviously chidorid into crackling blue-white oblivion. He was lying on his back on the stony ground, with his eyes closed, covered in sweat and blood, with his clothes shredded like paper into ribbons, and his knuckles smashed and sliced. After resetting his broken fingers, she tried to talk to him, but she got no words out of him that day, or for nearly a week after. It took a lot of deduction and searching to find out that Ino had blurted to Sasuke that morning about Sai and Naruto's 'sordid affair', or whatever it was she was calling it that time. Sakura wonders at times what exactly Sasuke's anger was about, but she hurries herself over thoughts like that, because the potential answers she can find in her heart aren't pleasant.

Sasuke's flat is an odd place. It's not that she doesn't feel welcome, it just doesn't feel like she _belongs_ there. It's very clean, which she approves of, without many personal touches, apart from the billion Uchiha crests everywhere. In a way, that makes it even more impersonal, although she has never voiced that opinion. It feels like she's being watched by generations of sharingan-wielding prodigies, even though there isn't a single picture anywhere. In fact, there are only two pictures in the house; the original Team Seven photograph, which she has a copy of herself - and she happens to know that Naruto has one too, which he treasures above almost anything, even ramen - and the photo which was taken just after Sasuke came back, of the reunited Team Kakashi. Sakura is smiling happily in that picture, laughing a little. Kakashi is wearing his usual bright smile as well, with a hand resting on Sakura's shoulder, the older holding his stupid pervy book. Sasuke looks impassive, and Naruto has an arm slung around his shoulders, as well as Sakura's, wearing the broadest grin Sakura has ever seen on him. He _shines_ with it. It's a little odd to see Naruto in the middle, although she's not sure why. When she really takes the time to think about it, it's true that Naruto has always been the glue that kept the team together.

It isn't like that now. She knows she's barely managing to stop them from all falling apart, and it doesn't really seem as though any of the men are even trying. Kakashi is caught up with missions and other things that he never mentions, and which she never asks about. He seems to find it pleasantly nostalgic to get all four of them together again, but nothing more than that. And neither of Sakura's other team-mates want anything to do with it any longer. At times Sakura can drag them all into the same space and get everyone talking - but not to each other. It isn't the same, anymore.

Sakura always expected, in a hollow way, that when one of them got seriously hurt, they would somehow repent and make up. Maybe that way things could go back to normal. Although she doesn't have much hope of that. Things will never be _normal_ again, just like they could never be after Sasuke went and came back. It changed too much, too thoroughly, for too long.

Eventually, Naruto is brought back from a failed mission by Neji, covered in blood and not breathing. Sakura oversees the surgery, because she wouldn't have it any other way. And it's not as if anyone's going to argue with her about something that important. After she's made completely certain that he's going to live, although only just, she rushes back to Sasuke's to plead with him to come and see Naruto. She expects - assumes - never even considered the possibility that he wouldn't - him to be shocked and hurry to the hospital with her. But instead he just looks at her placidly, and then goes back to sharpening kusanagi, which is placed on his crossed knees, with a darkly moist whetstone. Sakura can't help but stare at him incredulously, and repeats herself: 'Naruto almost died.'

He doesn't answer, and she stands there for several minutes, just gaping at him in disbelief, before punching him across the jaw so hard that he smashes through the wall behind. He picks himself up, cracking his jaw and rubbing at it, and doesn't say a word. Sakura walks away in disgust.

Sakura doesn't make it into a drama when she breaks up with him a couple of days after. She doesn't waste time, either. She just comes and takes the spare key to her flat that she gave him, along with the other few things she had there, and leaves the key he gave her. To be honest, she had to ask for it in the first place. She tells him blandly that it's over, and he looks at her silently for a while, before nodding offhandedly and going back to reading. That stings, but she doesn't bother to get angry. It doesn't hurt as much as she imagined it would, she realises, finding out that he didn't care as much as she thought. So she takes her things and walks back to the hospital, not even stopping to drop her load off at home, and sits and talks to Naruto, who laughs and smiles with her and makes her feel inherently happier somehow. Sai sits on the windowsill in his weird belly-shirt, looking deathly pale like always, as though he were the one who lost nearly all his blood a few days ago instead of Naruto, saying nothing and smiling faintly with his eyes closed, almost as though he's dozing. She doesn't tell Naruto she ended her relationship with Sasuke - she's not sure that he would care, but quite apart from that, she doesn't really want to think about it.

'...It's in the past, now.' she whispers into the dark as she stares at the ceiling, alone in her bedroom.

She makes sure that it doesn't become awkward between Sasuke and herself, which isn't too hard. He doesn't seem to mind, and is as reservedly pleasant to her as he always was, which is somehow a blow to her pride. It sort of feels like she was never anything but a title to him. She remembers the sorts of emotions that Naruto was able to tease out of Sasuke when they were kids, and it's around then that she recalls that she's never been able to get that kind of reaction - _any_ reaction, really - out of him.

She knows that if Naruto wasn't pretending that Sasuke didn't exist, he would ask about their sudden apparent lack of relationship (even though - and it hurts to admit it - to an outsider it probably wouldn't seem as though anything had changed). But of course he is pretending, and he doesn't ask. Sakura lets him make his own assumptions. It's not as if he'll shout at Sasuke - although she remembers the way he used to be, and how he would probably have killed Sasuke with his bare hands for doing anything along the lines of hurting her.

Over the years, she keeps hoping for some reconciliation, but typically, it never comes. Sai and Naruto don't work out, but they remain close, and Sakura privately guesses that they still share certain 'benefits' quite comfortably, long after their relationship is officially over. Sasuke never gets into another relationship, and Sakura can't help the tiny selfish part of her mind that gloats smugly. 'I'm the only one who he's ever slept with' it crows, conveniently ignoring the other voices that mutter darkly around midnight, and whose words she can't help detesting with a passionate fury.

She's not sure why she hates those thoughts so much. She's always thought, in a way, that Sasuke would likely never love her. She'd had hope for a while, but now she understands that she was simply being naïve. It isn't pleasant to think that, but she is comfortable in the knowledge that she and the rest of the original Team Seven will always be the ones closest to Sasuke, who he considers an awkward kind of friend. And seeing as he and Naruto still pretend to be blind, and Kakashi is around less and less, Sakura knows that Sasuke hardly spends time with anyone but her.

She's not _happy_, as such. Her life has deteriorated from the perfect future she had planned when she was thirteen, and she's seen so much pain and loss all around her since then. The people she loves most - Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi, and the rest of her friends and family - have gone through the same and worse, and some of them came out with heads held high, managed to start over, turned their lives around and got their happy endings. Not her team, but some people. Ino, for example, although Sakura makes a note never to enquire about her sex life - she doesn't understand how that household works, and she isn't sure she wants to.

She would be happier, though, if her boys were happy. And while Naruto doesn't seem too bothered by the fact that he hasn't looked at his best friend for roughly a decade, she knows it must have affected him really. But Sasuke... Sasuke she can't tell. He doesn't seem to care much about anything anymore. As a traitor, will never make ANBU, even though he is a million times qualified. He's stuck as a jounin for life, while Naruto surpassed ANBU captain years ago, and is well known as the next in line for Hokage. It must hurt, not only to lose your best friend (or whatever they were to each other), but to be left so thoroughly behind like that.

Very occasionally - as in once every two or three years - Sakura wonders briefly if Sasuke will leave again. But she always feels like horrible for thinking it.

She doesn't know if she or her team will get their own 'happy ever afters'. Naruto is going to make Hokage, when Tsunade finally retires, and Itachi is long gone, along with all the other fiascos that surrounded _that_. Sakura even had Sasuke to herself for a while. All three of them got their dreams, in one way or another - and she's fairly willing to bet that none of them got quite what they were hoping for. 'Be careful what you wish for', her mum said. She agrees.

* * *

I had trouble finding a place to end it. It's not my best work... Sigh. But! I do quite like it. I've played with the idea of writing more about it - I find the potential dynamic with Sasuke and Naruto ignoring one another quite interesting - but I very much doubt anything will ever come of that. Don't get your hopes up.

Anyhow! Review?


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